Category: Wilderness Explorer

What an enormous adrenaline rush today would have been. How Matt managed to complete his ‘straight-face challenge’ through the second set of rapids beats me, (he was so proud of that by the way), but it certainly made me laugh – you’ll have to zoom in on the photographs to get the full effect, […]

I’m not sure of the origins of the ‘Hedgehog Game’, no doubt it all started as a dare! Matt mentioned the game a number of times after he came back from Africa, usually with reference to Sam. Apparently Sam managed to get up to twenty cocktail sticks – a feat that, as you can […]

It must have been strange after all of the activity of the trip so far to suddenly have a completely lazy day. Why am I not surprised that after the conclusion of the passport debacle, and the ensuing relief, it ended up with all of them playing a game of ‘Chase the Chicken’ … […]

Finally the group get off the mountain and are ready to start their R&R phase. However, today was not to be as stress-free as they had probably thought that it would be … Day 23 – 7th August This morning camp was packed away much quicker thanks to the aid of our […]

When Matt got back from Africa, as you might expect, he told us all about his adventures. One or two activities really stood out for me as things that had obviously been very exciting/enjoyable for Matt – today’s entry is about one of those events. I’m not sure if the group had been told […]

After their achievement of yesterday, the aches and pains of today must have been, whilst not unexpected, thoroughly demoralizing. At least they had the fabulous views to buoy them on their way down the final part of the mountain. The last part of today’s journal made me smile – I wonder if I ever found […]

I can’t begin to imagine the levels of exhaustion that the group must have felt during today’s trek, but the group photo at the summit certainly shows how happy they were to have completed their climb. I love that photo because to me it just encapsulates the pride that Matt felt of their achievement […]

I wonder if today was what the group had anticipated. When you go off on an adventure it must be quite hard to know exactly what to expect, and then when you get to where the good bits should be happening I guess sometimes they are not quite as exciting as you had thought that […]

One of the things I remember Matt telling us when he got back from the trip was how grateful he was to the porters for carrying all of their luggage up Mount Elgon. I have been told that climbing at altitude is a very different experience to ‘normal’ climbing, even for the fittest amongst us, […]

Matt used to tell me off for skipping breakfast – the most important meal of the day. I expect that today’s breakfast was a very tasty change to the normal bowl of porridge that they had been having. His normal breakfast of choice was either a large-sized bowl of Kellogs Cocoa Pops or a sausage […]